Colby’s Corner Lightning Strike back behind Dynamic duo

It was brought to my attention that one of the best teams in the league, if not the best team in the league, wasn’t receiving a lot of media attention. The Tampa Bay Lightning are atop the Eastern Conference and a big part of that is because of the play of their star forwards Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov.

To say these two players are on fire might be understatement. Stamkos and Kucherov are one and two in the league in points with Stamkos leading the way with 30 points and Kucherov only one behind. Kucherov does have a league lead in one category though, as he leads the NHL in goals with 16. Someone has to set up all of those goals and – no surprise – it’s been Stamkos. Stammer leads the league in assists with 22 assists.

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These two have tremendous numbers, as both players are around 1.7 points-per-game this season. To put this in perspective, last season when Connor McDavid put up 100 points, his points-per-game was roughly 1.2. When Patrick Kane put up 106 points a few years ago, his points-per-game was roughly 1.3. I understand it’s early, but both of these players on pace for well over 100 points this season.

This is great for Tampa and their fans because they have Stamkos back from injury and he is making players around him better – just like he always has. They have also had strong play from goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. Vasilevskiy leads the league with 12 wins and he is top-10 in save percentage with .928. Vasilevskiy may be one of the bigger surprises for this team as he has filled Ben Bishop‘s shoes perfectly, if not better, in his young career.

As for media coverage, I understand it’s about market-size and money, but it does get on my nerves. These players aren’t being talked about as much as if it was McDavid, Sidney Crosby or Auston Matthews. If it was any of the other three players, we would already be reading articles all the time about them and hockey analysts would be all but handing them the MVP trophy already.

So I’m sorry Bolts fans: you do deserve better. But, if you remember when Stammer won the scoring title, you didn’t get that much coverage then either. If that’s the formula for a Hart or Art Ross Trophy, then it looks like the Lightning’s stars are well on their way.

So Bolts fans keep you head down hope for the players to continue to dominate and – more importantly – hope they stay healthy, because the Lightning could be an early favorite for the Presidents’ Trophy. This team should be playoff bound if they can keep it together.